Quick fix unlikely for Red Bull’s problems – Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo says the problems which have limited Red Bull to 14 laps in three days are unlikely to be solved overnight.

Rivals Mercedes have covered 177 laps over the test so far. Ricciardo managed three laps on his first day in the car, which included a stoppage on his first lap out of the pits.

“We’ll see how tomorrow goes, hopefully get significantly more done,” he said.

“I think the break before Bahrain’s going to help the team a lot,” said Ricciardo. “Even if tomorrow doesn’t go to plan I’m still not worried I think Bahrain will sort itself out for us, we’ve got two weeks there which will be good.”

“Then there’s Melbourne as well. It’s a long year but definitely not getting worried about anything yet.”

Ricciardo said the team will attempt a short-term fix in order to gain some mileage in the final say of the Jerez test on Friday.

“They assume it’s going to be something that they’ll have to go back to the factory and sort it all out,” he said.

“At the same time they’re obviously trying and hoping that a quicker fix is ready for tomorrow. So we’ll see. They’ve worked nearly 36 hours now pretty much trying to get it running at least and getting it going so.”

Ricciardo played down the significant of team principal Christian Horner and chief technical officer Adrian Newey’s departure from the test today.

“They’ve gone back to – well at least Adrian’s gone back to the drawing board, definitely. I guess now there’s only so much they can do here at the track and I think for Adrian he’s pretty happy working in his office back in Milton Keynes. He’ll definitely be getting involved in trying to sort out the next best step.”

With Lotus absent from the test, the two other Renault-engined teams Toro Rosso and Caterham have also completed much less mileage than their rivals. Ricciardo denied this was a major concern for Red Bull.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a bigger worry, I just think it’s proof that once it does get underway it’s going to happen obviously for all of us then everything will fast-track quickly. She’ll be right.”

Get your facts right, RedBull has the biggest budget, and the term is right which is nearly unlimited.. Even other teams are concerned about Redbull’s budget, the ones declared, and the many more undeclared.

I agree. They will fix the issues. But while the Mercedes and Ferrari powered teams go back to the factory with lots of engine and aero data to look at correlations with wind tunnel and CFD work etc, Red Bull have two week’s of crisis management ahead of them, with the sole aim of getting a car to Bahrain that can lap the circuit.
Although Lotus are also behind, they are probably very happy they didn’t spend more than a week packing and transporting their operation to Spain to learn the same things they could do by starting up a car stationary in the factory.

Good. Its nice to see Red Bull are up for a challenge. I am sure they are able to get over it, and hope it will add another interesting story to follow for the pre-season and if we are lucky to the first half of the season as well.

There are two major problems that Red Bull are facing, the Power Unit from Renault looks like its not up to the level of Mercedes and the Exhaust Blown effects that benefit them so much from have disappeared, Adrian Newey maybe a fantastic designer, but he hasn’t always been successful, I think these rules favour the teams with the best Power Unit and reliability, I actually think Red Bull may drop into the pack this year, with Mercedes and McLaren out front.

And also RBR’s electricals have some problem.
People seem to forget Newey’s lack of titles from 1999-2009 (constructors, not drivers) and the fact that his design’s are generally less reliable than the others.

Although it is quite early to make any judgements, I remember Vettel after winning a race last year(dont remember which one) said on radio – ” Enjoy as much as you can, savor these moments..things wont last forever ”

Looking back at that and the way things are going for Red Bull at present, he was so right about it – things do get changed in F1 And that too very quickly.

The RB10 is loyal to Adrian Newey’s philosophy, it is an extreme project again but unlike the previous years the packaging is implied by the rules which cut the advantage that Red Bull enjoyed over the previous years, i don’t have any doubts about the RB10 chassis but i think that Renault got it wrong this time because the problems were exclusive in the Renault powered cars because i don’t think that neither Caterham nor Torro Rosso have that extreme packaging of the Red Bull with all my respects, and i hope that their V6 engine will not evolve under the engine freeze regime like the V8 engine

@tifoso1989 What is definitely a mistery (for us fans) is to know how much of these problems in the RB car are also for them to be blamed. I know they have resources, but so did McLaren last year. When the car starts flawed, I think it’s harder to recover, and much more to transform a flawed car into a winner. McL couldn’t last year, let’s see if Red Bull can react quickly. Maybe it’s time to see a different champion. But as somebody else stated before, it would have been funnier to see a team beating Red Bull on equal terms. If this situation continues, we will see something as the film “Gladiator” when Maximus was already hurt before the final battle.

It would be foolish for anyone to underestimate the same team which has virtually ran F1 in the past 4 years. Still, with the new exhaust regulations Newey can’t play any of his usual tricks anymore. Newey has always been a master at using exhaust blowing techniques to his advantage, he used this even during his days in McLaren and Williams. That and the fact that the V6 Renault appears to be the worst out of the 3 powerplants.

The Red Bull with the biggest performance advantage was the non-blown RB6.

That thing was blowing hot air more than Luca and Bernie combined.
It had exhausts on the floor from the moment it hit the track in the winter testing. They even had those fake stickers to hide it. And it was blowing as I said. That’s why Vettel’s engine almost packed in Bahrain.

@mnmracer
Red Bull were already playing exhaust tricks in 2010 (source). Likewise, I’m quite certain that the RB6 did not have a bigger performance advantage than the RB9 did in the second half of 2013.

Well this is obviously a design problem and although they’ll be able to fix it for the next test, one wonders how much the performance will be affected by this.

Also for Renault, if a problem like this didn’t show in the dyno and simulations, who knows how many more this engine might have.
Even so If I was a Red Bull fan I wouldn’t be too worried about it now, until the first 3-5 races we can’t know for sure if they will not be championship contenders anymore.

I know its early, but it sure looks like Kimi lucked out going to Ferrari instead of Red Bull, and Hulk lucked out not having money to go to Lotus. My guess is Newey is pushing the packaging too much on the RB10. You can look back at Newey’s Mclaren days where he could make a rocket ship, but it was a miracle if it could finish a race. It will be real interesting to see what RBR can do for Bahrain.

I don’t think Red Bull’s problems are as simple as just the Power Unit.

It’s poor – from what we can see – but Red Bull seem to be having more issues than Toro Rosso and Caterham. I think from what I’ve read and heard Red Bull are suffering from severe cooling issues due to Newey’s over-tight packaging. If the worst comes to the worst, Red Bull could be in for a re-design.

They have a contract with Renault for engines till 2016 & Infiniti (Nissan’s luxury devision & Nissan is part owned by and in alliance with Renault) is their title sponsor. There is little to no chance of a Merc engine in the RB unless there is a huge split with the supplier of engines to their only championship winning cars.

With all the troubles that Renault-engined cars are having, it seems that Lotus aren’t missing out on too much in terms of mileage. Of course, they are still missing out on the troubleshooting tests that others are able to do, but even if Lotus were at the test, they probably wouldn’t cover much distance anyway.

At the risk of sounding unsporting, I am quite happy to say that I am experiencing unrivalled glee at the moment. I am sick of Red Bull and Vettel dominating, and am thoroughly enjoying seeing them having been too clever for their own good to the point where Marussia are doing a better job than they are.